


Snapshots

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: 6 Things, Alchemy, Birthday Party, Cemetery, Conversations, Gen, Growing Up, Kindergarten, Phone Calls, Skipping Class
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-25 22:00:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18171992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: “So they're all important years?”“Yes! Roy, come on. Elicia loves her uncle.”Or 6 Times Roy showed up for Elicia.





	Snapshots

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a 5 things fic but it turns out there are 6 things.

I.

“You're coming to Elicia's birthday party, right?”  
  
Roy sighs heavily.

“Mustang, two is a very important year.”  
  
“That's what you said last year.”

“One _is_ a very important year.”  
  
“So they're all important years?”  
  
“Yes! Roy, come on. Elicia loves her uncle.”

Roy leans back in his office chair and allows the memories of his younger self to be baffled by this world in which hanging out with Maes means playing party games with a toddler.

“Roy,” Maes whines, on the other end of the phone.  
  
“Fine. Yes, I'll be there.” Elicia Hughes's birthday is close enough to his annual assessment that he can rationalize the trip. And he would never hear the end of it from Maes if he decided not to go.

“Thanks, Roy. You're the best!”

Hughes hangs up the phone with a sharp click, and Roy calls Riza over so she can help him find the forms he'll need to file a leave request.

 

II.

“Uncle Roy! Uncle Roy! I'm ready!”

The little girl flies across the room, jumping into Roy's arms. He grunts in surprise, but smiles. He shifts Elicia to his hip and tries not to think about how she's really getting too big for him to carry.

“Ready for what?” he asks, although the backpack and school uniform make it obvious.  
“Kindergarten,” she announces, with a bright, beaming grin.

Roy sets her down and looks over to Gracia, who stands in the kitchen adding an orange and a couple of small cookies to a bright pink lunch tin.

“I'm ready, Mommy!” Elicia shouts. She runs up to her mother, who closes up the lunchbox, hands it to her daughter, and then hugs her close and kisses the top of her head.

“Are you sure you don't want to come with us?” Roy asks, as Elicia slides her small hand through his.

Gracia shakes her head. “I'll have many, many days to walk Elicia to school. The first day...” She trails off, but Roy nods understanding. The first day was supposed to be for Maes.

“Come on, Uncle Roy,” Elicia cries, dragging him toward the doorway. “I love you, Mommy,” she calls over her shoulder. Gracia tells her to be good and try hard, and then Roy pushes open the door so that Elicia can squeeze through. He shuts it behind them, and they begin to venture down the sidewalk, still hand in hand. Elicia keeps up a constant stream of chatter that makes Roy exhausted just hearing it. She truly is her father's daughter.

The school is only eight blocks away, atop a hill that Roy and Elicia navigate by climbing a sharply inclined street. Roy keeps checking on Elicia, expecting her to complain or stop, but she's still bouncing up and down on her feet, and tugging on his hand.

When the school bell rings, the older kids surge forward into the building. Roy notices the familiar Amestrian flag near the front doors. The kindergarteners gather on a playground beside the school building, and rather than run ahead like he was expecting, Elicia just grabs his hand tighter. Roy crouches down so that he can look her in the eye.

“What's wrong?” he asks her calmly.

“What if nobody wants to be my friend?”

Roy feels a twinge of the long-ago anxiety that had dogged him through most of elementary school. But Elicia doesn't have anything to worry about. She's pure Amestrian, and a great kid besides that. If Roy is reading the situation right, she'll have made friends with half the class by the end of the day. Elicia giggles when he tells her so. “Go on,” he coaxes. “Why don't you go play?”

Elicia runs off toward the playground, and as Roy stands up again, the kindergarten teacher meets his eye and gives him a smile, before she turns back to her class.

Roy walks slowly back to Gracia's house, where a cup of coffee is set in front of him and he sips at it through eyes clouded by tears. Riza pretends not to notice, and Gracia looks just as lost as he feels.

“I'm so sorry,” he says softly. He's been apologizing for this for years, but he can't set it right.

Gracia rests her hand on top of his. “You're good for her, General Mustang. Please don't lose touch.”

Roy nods, and Black Hayate barks under the table.

“She'll do great at school,” he tells Gracia.

She nods, and sips at her coffee before saying “Thank you,” quiet and calm. And Roy wonders if it's a betrayal of Maes to think that his house without him in it still feels comforting.

 

III.

According to the newspaper's weather section, the sun set twenty minutes ago, yet there is a pink-orange tinge to the western sky, as darkness rapidly drapes itself over the rest of the city. Elicia's sixth birthday party had dissolved early. Without Maes there to effortlessly bring the guests together, there was really nothing to keep them there after the dutiful delivery of gifts and the cake. Roy'd been watching as Elicia and her kindergarten friends ran around giggling as they played with dolls and toy guns and chased Black Hayate around the yard. Eventually they'd all grown too tired to do anything other than lay on the grass staring up at the clouds.

Once everyone had left, Roy asked Gracia if he could take Elicia for a little while. Riza's look of concern constituted an entire unsaid conversation, but in the end, she helped Gracia clean up and then sat down at the small table with Hayate at her feet. Roy tucked Elicia into the back seat of his car, and drove to the military cemetary. Elicia's been here before, but she looks around as if the place is entirely new. And she holds tight to Roy's hand.

Roy can hear the whispering ghosts all around him. Maes isn't even the only person he knows who is buried here. Loss is an inescapable part of military life. His father is here, somewhere. Roy's never felt the need to go looking for him. He remembers pieces of the funeral, being scared by the gunshots, pressing himself against Aunt Chris's leg.

“Are you scared, Ellie?”

She looks up at him, frowning, but then shakes her head. Roy takes her hand, and together they make their way toward Maes's grave.

They sit at the base of the headstone, listening to the quiet that makes this place seem so far removed from the city that surrounds it. They hear owls hooting and see twinkling fireflies. Elicia lays down on her stomach in the grass. “Tell me a story, Uncle Roy,” she says softly.

 _Tell me a story about Maes._ Roy closes his eyes and waits for some answer to her request to formulate itself in his brain.

Eventually, he settles on the time Maes carried him piggyback through the streets, alternating between whistling jubilantly and singing at the top of his lungs. It was Roy's birthday, a frigid January day, but neither of them had cared. They'd ended up getting plastered, to one's surprise. But he left that part out of Elicia's retelling. Although he mumbles it to himself, because she's fallen asleep. He picks her up and carries her to the car.

And this becomes their tradition, to come here every year on her birthday, just the two of them. And as she grows up, she stops demanding stories and instead fires off question after question. “What did he like?” “What's his favorite... Food? Color? Bedtime story?” Things Roy has no idea how to answer. “Maybe Mommy knows,” Elicia finally says.

Roy tries to smile. “Yeah. Maybe.”

 

IV.

“Uncle Roy, can you teach me how to do alchemy?”  
  
Roy stares at the phone receiver in his hand and blinks. He shifts the phone back onto his shoulder so that he can situate his ear next to the cradle while keeping his hands free enough to handle the paperwork scattered across the desk. He knows he's supposed to read everything before he signs it, but he can't keep up even as it is. Why didn't anyone tell him when he started this journey that each step upward in the ranks required more reports and written orders and transfer requests and leave requests and inventory logs? It was all just neverending.  
  
“Uncle Roy,” Elicia sings into the phone.

It seems in addition to his natural extroversion, Maes's kid has also inherited the ability to call Roy on his work line, expecting a full and cheerful conversation. “I'm here, kid. You know, you're not supposed to call me at work.”

“Mommy says you're always at work except for when I'm sleeping.”

That's... probably true, actually. Roy sighs again. “So what do you want to know about alchemy?”  
  
“Everything.”  
  
He can't help but crack a smile at that. Her eagerness kindles something inside of him that he'd long thought was dead: a joy in using his scientific knowledge to create instead of destroy.

“I think 'everything' is more than I can manage at the moment. But I'll tell you what: I'll come over this weekend and show you a few things.”  
  
“Thanks, Uncle Roy, you're the best!”

She hangs up the phone with the same excited ferocity Maes used to. He'd always been genuinely happy with the world and wanted to share that with Roy, even when he should've had a thousand other things on his mind. Roy was lucky to have loved someone like that, even if they'd never said the words out loud.  
  
“I hope I'm doing okay with your daughter, Maes,” he whispers into the now too-quiet office. After nearly a full minute of sitting in the silence, waiting for a response he damn well knows won't come – the dead don't talk – Roy sighs and gets back to work. He stays late into the night, so late that it's actually early the next day, but all of the papers he'd started with have been signed and stacked neatly in his outbox. Riza would be thrilled.

The display of competence made Friday pass quickly and easily, even though Roy missed his old team, scattered throughout Amestris now. They still reported in every now and then, but that wasn't the same thing as having a loyal core group by his side every day. With his old team, he could've gone out for drinks on a Friday night.

Instead, he walks Black Hayate at Riza's side, and goes home early enough to call Elicia Hughes.

“Are you still coming over here tomorrow?” she whispers into the phone.

“Of course. Why are you whispering?”

After a pause, Elicia says “I don't know,” at normal volume.

Roy actually laughs at that, and then Elicia laughs too. “Get some sleep, kiddo,” he urges her, after she's spent nearly an hour talking to him about her eight-year-old problems and he offers advice that he can only hope is actually helpful. “I'll be there early tomorrow.”  
  
Roy keeps his promise. Decades of working for the military have made it annoyingly easy for him to get up before the sun. When he shows up at the Hughes' house, Elicia's sitting at the table shoveling cereal into her mouth. As soon as Gracia opens the door for him, the little girl is flinging herself at him, and squeezing him into a hug.

“Hey, kiddo.”

“Can you teach me now?”

Roy was twelve when he drew his first circle, and even then, it took years to learn enough chemistry and geology and physics and metallurgy to be able to really understand what he was doing. Even so, he sits with Elicia on the concrete pathway leading from the street up to her house, and he draws a very basic circle, one variant of which Edward Elric had been successfully using at the age of four.

He's not expecting Elicia to be a prodigy, but when she manages, after four or five stumbling attempts, to transmute the concrete into the shape of a dog (Elicia says it's Black Hayate), Roy is more proud than he would've expected.

 

V.

“I brought you some ice cream.” Roy holds up the two cones, already melting in his hands.

“I have class.”

“Skip it.” Elicia stares at him like he's grown an extra head. “I promise, Ellie, skipping sixth grade math won't kill you.”

“History.”

“What?”

“It's history class, not math.”

“Even better, then. Amestrian history is... very distorted,” Roy says as he hands Ellie a cone dripping with chocolate ice cream.

“Thank you,” she says, after taking a few licks of the scoop. “Aren't you not supposed to say that?”

“The truth?”

“You work for the _Amestrian military_. Besides, you know I'm only gonna be tested on what they teach in Amestrian public schools.”

They both finish their ice cream, standing outside of Roy's car. “I'm smart, Uncle Roy. I know that what I learn in school isn't what really happened.”

Roy nods, doing his best to shield both himself and Elicia from the bottomless well of grief that accompanies their every visit. What happened to Maes Hughes was covered up, the State putting him to rest as a hero rather than acknowledge what he'd discovered. Maes was a hero, so Roy's not sad about that part. It's just... “Your dad was smart, too,” he says, squeezing Elicia's shoulder.

They climb into the car, and Roy clicks on the radio as Elicia asks “Where are we going?”

When Roy doesn't answer, she starts humming and tapping her fingers on the inside of the door. At least until Roy slows down and finally stops in a crowded alley. “What is this place?” Elicia asks. There's a small building that might be an apartment, and a larger, two-story building looming over them.

“It's where I grew up. Come on. Let's go inside.”

Roy pulls open a door that leads into a kitchen. It looks industrial, like what Elicia imagined a restaurant kitchen would look like. It's much bigger than the kitchen she and her mother shared. She frowns up at Roy, but he just leads her through the kitchen into a larger room. There are heavy curtains over the windows to block out most of the sunlight, and Elicia almost has to squint to make out the details of the dimly lit space. There are several booth seats lined up against the back wall, and a very large bar with barstools just beside her. Madam Christmas's bar has been rebuilt since the Promised Day. Roy is aware of subtle differences between what he sees and the home he was raised in. But overall, his aunt's done a good job of bouncing back from the explosion that shook this place down to its foundations.

“Nice to see you again, Roy,” a voice calls from the opposite end of the bar. “Who's this you've brought with you?”  
  
Elicia jumps. She hadn't realized they weren't alone. Out of habit, she clings closer to Roy.

“Aunt Chris, please tell me you're not still working the bar,” Mustang says with a deep sigh. “You're supposed to be retired.”

“This place wouldn't know what to do without me. Come sit down, both of you.”

Roy slides into a barstool and watches and Elicia climbs up to sit on the one next to him. The woman Roy had called Aunt Chris is staring intently at her. Elicia looks to Roy for a cue, and he gives her a reassuring nod.

“My name's Elicia Hughes” she says, holding out her hand to accept Chris's firm handshake.

“Nice to meet you, sweetie.” Chris looks to Roy, and he nods, confirming the answer to the question she hasn't actually asked.

“She's Maes's daughter.”

“She looks like him.”

Elicia, who has always been told she looks like her mother, looks up at Roy. He's smiling, but it's the wistful kind of smile he always gets when anyone mentions Maes.

“She does,” he agrees. Elicia grins.

 

VI.

Roy is on the panel that selects State Alchemists, supervising the practical exam as the highest ranking alchemist the military has. Elicia Hughes is not blood-related to him, so there can't be any charge of nepotism, but he'd be lying if he said she wasn't his favorite candidate. She's confident, and brilliant, intellectually and in her character. She draws other people to her, and she treats them well.

Roy's been watching her progress on this for years, staying clear of most of it because he knew he'd need to be a neutral party. Ed and Al Elric teamed up with her, for a while, and Mei Chang introduced some of the root elements of alkahestry. Roy can see it in the unfamiliar geometry of her circles, and the way she sometimes squints or stares at nothing in particular, reading the chi of the room. Alkahestry is useful, it can do things that traditional Amestrian alchemy can't. If Elicia can use it, as a State Alchemist, it will give the military a secret weapon no one's expecting. But he knows it can be used for medical purposes too, procedures that skirt the line of human transmutation, although the Xingese share Amestris's revulsion when it comes to attempting to raise the dead. Elicia could be a front-line medic, if she wanted to be.

When Roy becomes Fuhrer, he'll cut the chain that links State Alchemists to the military, and give them a chance to really be “for the people.” For now, that's out of his hands though.

All he has to do is watch Elicia kick ass on this assessment, and then decide whether to give her the score she deserves, or recommend against her nomination in a last desperate attempt to try to protect her. He knows what Maes would want. And he knows what he's going to do.

He watches as the Fuhrer shakes her hand and offers her congratulations. And he knows where Elicia will go, after this.

After he's dismissed from his duties, he drives over to the cemetery.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Designed to flow right into [Legacy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15630198)


End file.
